How to Merge Partition in Windows 7 Without Losing Data?

Unable to merge partitions in Disk Management

The partitions number or size on your hard drive may not satisfy your requirements all the time. Sometimes, you may want to merge two partitions into one to get better usage. How to merge partitions in Windows 7? If you are about to merge a data partition into an empty partition, you can try the “Extend Volume” feature in Windows Disk Management. This feature can add an adjacent unallocated space into the left partition. For example, there are drive C:, drive D: and drive E: on your hard disk. To merge C and empty D drive, you need first delete the D drive to make it a contiguous unallocated space for C drive.

Step 1. Open Disk Management by pressing Windows+R and typing “diskmgmt.msc”, in the pop-up windows.

Step 2. Right click on the D partition and choose ”Delete Volume”, then it will become unallocated space.

Step 3. Right click on the C partition and choose “Extend Volume”, then follow the steps to finish the task. Finally, you will see the two partitions merged as one.

Note: The above demonstration is based on the condition where the D drive is an empty partition without any data, so we can delete it without worrying about data. What if there are important files stored on the partition you will delete? Thus, you cannot merge two partitions successfully in Disk Management. Of course, you can back up everything on the drive you will remove in advance, but that will cost more time.

Free software: merge partitions in Windows 7 without losing data

Given that you might be unable to merge partition in Windows 7 Disk Management, here we would like to share a free partition manager named AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard. This free software has a special feature called “Merge Partitions”, which can directly merge two adjacent partitions without damaging any data. You can free download it and follow the steps to merge partitions in Windows 7/8/10 within 3 steps.

Step 1. Install and run AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard. Right click the C drive, choose  "Advanced"> “Merge Partitions”.

Step 2. Next, tick the adjacent D drive and click on “OK”.

Step 3. Click “Apply” and “Proceed” to commit the pending operation.

Then the D drive will be merged into C drive, and the D drive will exist on the C drive as a folder, which contains all data on the original D drive.

Notes:
①You can only merge 2 partitions in one time, and the two partitions must be adjacent.
②You can merge data partition into system drive, but you cannot merge system boot drive into data partition.
③"System Reserved" partition could not be merged.
④System partition or boot partition cannot be merged with the front partition.
⑤You cannot merge two partitions that are on different hard disks.

Summary

So, with the free AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard, you can easily merge partitions in Windows 7/8/10. Moreover, the “Merge Partitions” can merge non-adjacent unallocated space into another partitions, a more flexible way to extend volume. If you want to split a large partition into two smaller partitions, please upgrade to Professional. It has much more advanced features: recover deleted partitions, migrate OS partition to another MBR/GPT disk, allocate free space from one drive to another, align partitions on SSD drive and more.